


Body of Work

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2007, BirthdayGift, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/92014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ritual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Body of Work

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/74374.html).
> 
> A birthday gitf for Ultraviolet9a who wanted a naked John Winchester.

She starts at the small of his back, right above the curve of his ass. She starts with short strokes, the brush catching on the invisible imperfections of his skin, the paint drying almost immediately in a chalk color, like ash or faded ink on his olive skin.

She goes up slowly, crossing scars scattered like signposts across his back. She adds straight, vertical lines. Two concentric circles around each shoulder blade, dots in the middle, on the hard platform of the bone.

She stops to mesh the paint, change the brush for one that is smaller, softer. He is immobile, relaxed, but for a barely-there twitch in his left leg. Involuntary contractions of muscles. He shivers when the paintbrush touches his skin again, goose bumps along his arms and chest.

He is tall and she stands on the tips of her feet to reach his neck. The symbol she draws there is complex and for a moment she loses sight of his body, lost in the intricacies of her art. One of the s-shaped strokes ends just under his left ear, distorted by the high ridge of the tendon. The other winds lower above his right clavicle, stops abruptly in the hollow there.

She takes a step back, looks critically at the drawing where it interrupts suddenly right above his pectorals. He exhales then, and the painting comes alive above the ripple of strong muscles. She smiles, satisfied. Feels the power flowing through her hands, surging thorough her veins, carried by her blood. Her heritage.

The black hair on his chest makes her work harder. She stops to wet the brush again and again.

The rhythm of the painting is as important as the painting itself and she struggles to find it, to match it to the rise and fall of his abdomen.

She slows down at his navel, at the thin skin around his hipbone, where his vital organs lie. He recoils slightly when she goes lower, startles when she moves his penis to the right to access his groin, the fragile patch of skin where leg joins hip.

Before winding down to the end, she stops. Slow, measured breaths, letting the power surge through her mouth. Words, ancient words; secret and powerful coming to her lips. Soft whispers against his legs.

He loosens his stance when she paints his tights, twitches when she hits the sensitive spot behind his knee where the skin is baby-soft and rosy.

_Are you ready?_ She asks before completing the ritual. He nods, short and clipped, jaw clenched tight in preparation of the pain. It will be intense, consuming. Brief, though. She knows he won't scream.

She rises from her crouch, turns him around toward the mirror. The two steps he needs to make are stiff. She stays at his back, looking at his body through the mirror, above his shoulders: canvas and drawing two separate entities she will have to blend. She closes her eyes and feels the tremble starting like a low hum deep in his muscles, surging in potency under her hands.

It travels into the ten points of pressure of her fingers. In the silence, his grunt is loud. She opens her eyes to look at his face, features distorted by the pain. She looks at his chest heaving with choked breaths, at the single tear that darkens his lashes when he scrunches his eyes shut.

The painting disappears with each contraction of muscles. Lines and swirls and circles merging into his skin, travelling deeper through muscles and organs and bones.

Everything quiets at last and he opens his eyes. She smiles at his reflection, there is awe there he can't hide: this man hadn't come here carrying many doubts, but those he still had, she's wiped clean.

She indulges for a moment, admires her work. Drinks in the perfect lines of a body that the untaught eye will dismiss as naked, breakable.

Not anymore. Not forever, either. She smiles feeling the power still vibrating under her hands, ready to be unleashed, used, wielded. She can see the lines she's etched into his skin taking roots, the body underneath accommodating them.

Afterward, when she lets him go, he clothes himself without saying a word, without hiding, with no futile modesty. She looks. Because his body is glorious and she's made it perfect.

\--


End file.
